UK: Teenager jailed for refusing to disclose password

[Boris Godunov]

Theoretically one can refuse and not be sent to jail.

What? I guess if a judge is feeling nice, sure. But he could also choose to jail you for contempt of court for not complying with a court-ordered warrant. That seems to be exactly what happened to this guy.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Surely it's every American's right to deny the police entry to their kiddyporn dungeon?

[Asher]

ALLEGED kiddyporn dungeon!

[Hauldren Collider]

Oerdin defending child pornographers? What now?

Oerdin is, of course, right. In the US, child pornographers enjoy much more freedom.

They at least don't have to self incriminate.

And believe me, I hate the damn child porn laws, especially considering the ex post facto nature of many of them.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY I AM INTO KIDDIE PORN. I AM NOT

However I think Elok is right and this isn't self-incrimination.

[Hauldren Collider]

By the way, how is this appreciably different from TSA employees demanding the ability to search a laptop computer?

I don't think there is one, and I think that that is unconstitutional. But alas, many do not share my view.

[Flubber]

I don't think this is refusal to self-incriminate. It's refusal to comply with a presumptively legal search. I mean, suppose they thought he had child porn in a physical file cabinet, and they showed him a valid warrant to search it. He then refuses them the key. That would just be refusing to comply, no? Little different from barricading the door to keep them out. The fact that the key in this case is a memorized code of some sort seems irrelevant.

THIS !!!

Oerdin seems to be equating a right against self-incrimination with a right not to have possessions/property (including a computer) searched. It is obvious that an alleged offender's property may be searched if proper cause exists and the fact that he has a clever "lock" on his computer doesn't change this. I am assuming the government can access programs to break through the encryption??

[Asher]

There's many types of encryption the government cannot break. I assume he's using PGP or something, which they can't.

[Flubber]

Trying to compel any cooperation is demanding he potentially incriminate himself. There is a reason civilized states prevent the state from doing this kind of abuse just like there is a reason spouses get a special privilege against testifying against their will.

Strawman-- here the state is requesting a key to do a court-authorized search. Its no different than reqesting/ordering the production of a key to a filing cabinet. The only difference is that they know they can "force" the filing cabinet if they need to do so. Hopefully they can force his computer in the same way to complete their search.

[Flubber]

There's many types of encryption the government cannot break. I assume he's using PGP or something, which they can't.

I had read where this was an issue sometimes-- that there are commercially available encryption products which the goverment claims to be unable to break (I do not necessarily trust government assertions about this type of thing. They probably would prefer we not know what they can and cannot break.)

But if they cannot break the code, I am comfortable even if the suspect stayed in jail indefinitely. I am ok with the state's right to search and to me requiring people to unlock stuff the state has seized is a reasonable part of the search power

[Elok]

But if they cannot break the code, I am comfortable even if the suspect stayed in jail indefinitely. I am ok with the state's right to search and to me requiring people to unlock stuff the state has seized is a reasonable part of the search power

Yeah, it's kind of bad when you can effectively flaunt the law and get four months in place of potentially much greater penalties.

[Hauldren Collider]

Strawman-- here the state is requesting a key to do a court-authorized search. Its no different than reqesting/ordering the production of a key to a filing cabinet. The only difference is that they know they can "force" the filing cabinet if they need to do so. Hopefully they can force his computer in the same way to complete their search.

My understanding is that it's mathematically impossible to decrypt PGP in any economical timeframe without a key.

[Asher]

My understanding is that it's mathematically impossible to decrypt PGP in any economical timeframe without a key.

Depends on the encryption strength and depends on the presence of backdoors or known encryption flaws.

I bank on the latter, more than anything else. There's historical precedent of the industry colluding with the government to keep people in the dark on certain matters. IBM discovered some interesting things in the 1970s that the NSA/CIA convinced IBM to hush up about.

[Hauldren Collider]

Depends on the encryption strength and depends on the presence of backdoors or known encryption flaws.

I bank on the latter, more than anything else. There's historical precedent of the industry colluding with the government to keep people in the dark on certain matters. IBM discovered some interesting things in the 1960s that the NSA/CIA convinced IBM to hush up about.

I think the math behind RSA and DSA is pretty sound. I spoke to a cryptography guy when I was at CMU a few weeks back, we talked about that a bit. Then again, take with a grain of salt as the math is obviously way beyond me so I wouldn't know if he didn't know what he was talking about.

[Asher]

Specifically, in the 70s IBM discovered that DES (Data Encryption Standard) was vulnerable to differential cryptoanalysis to break block ciphers.

Someone figured this out independently in the late 1990s, at which point it was revealed IBM knew about it since the 70s but were "convinced" not to publish it. The DES was very widely used by the government.

[MikeH]

For anyone actually interested in the law, or the details of the case, on this David Allen Green's blog is worth a read. Either at New Statesman or Jack of Kent.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/10/police-drage-password-sex

It's actually much more complicated than the screaming banshees in our media make out. You really need to read the entire article, there's no easy summary.